


San's new shadow, and a bunch of other things that he never asked for

by runoti



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: even if he doesnt want to be, even when he feels like he cant be, sans is a big brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 16:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8217983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runoti/pseuds/runoti
Summary: But you still wipe spilt tears from puffy red cheeks and apply bandages to wobbly scraped knees, and from the depths of your memories it dredges up visions of tiny skeletal hands gripping at a bright red scarf, timid and innocent.
You feel like a child, who's been raising children.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I, uh
> 
> Im not that good at writing, and its kind of a struggle to get certain ideas across, but sometimes i get the sudden urge to write something out, and i can never rest until i do. I might as well post it somewhere while im at it, right?

Life after the Fall comes to you in timid faltering steps at first, but you grow accustomed to it. It's not as if you have much of a choice, anyways, and isn't that how your kind has survived after all these years? Adapt or die, you think the saying goes. Prosper under a mountain of crumbling rock and broken dreams or perish. 

At any rate, it's not a foreign concept to you.

You pick up odd jobs around town as the rest of monsterkind settles in, and like a newborn gyftrot on shaking lanky limbs you all find your footing. In some ways it's not entirely different from the life before: Undyne and Alphys still marathoning anime on weekend nights, Papyrus yelling at you to pick up your dirty socks, even Mettaton going on to make it big time in the human show business. Its an easy sort of familiarity, not like the sense of dread that crept over your soul at the nauseating feeling of deja vu. 

Its different, and in a way, the newness of it is... refreshing.  
\---------------------

Despite being the sole ambassador for all of monsterkind, Frisk always finds enough time in their day to trail behind you like a tiny shadow. Somehow. Always with their small fingers curled into the soft worn material of your thick winter coat, or wiggling in between your own bony white digits. But its not like you mind, in all honesty. You remember a certain tall bombastic skeleton doing the exact same thing when he was babybones, and its with a certain degree of nostalgic fondness that you slow down while walking on the street to allow for shorter legs to catch up to you. Or tuck them in at night, when exhaustion weighs down so heavily on their eyelids that they can't even keep them open.

You start to notice how differently the kid acts on the surface, after all is said and done. They're still the same kid, no doubt about it, but you see the heaviness in their features lessen, as if some great and harrowing weight has finally been lifted from their shoulders. A secret that only they are permitted to know. And you get that. You really, really do. Everyone is allowed their secrets, the skeletons in their closets, so to say, though half of you can't help but wonder at what sort of secret could affect a child so deeply. Silence them so quickly and drive them to so many sleepless nights. And you know that they have those, because you're not getting any sleep, either.

But when the barrier fell, its as if a part of the kid's facade fell with it.

And did it fall. They talk more, frown less, and act a little more, well, like a kid. Chasing their peers around the park in hyperactive bouts of tag, or hide and seek. Scribbling with reckless abandon on a slew of papers strewn across the living room floor before picking each one up and presenting it proudly to you, features curled up into a gap-toothed innocent smile that's seeking your attention and acceptance so desperately, and it never ceases to coax a twist of adoration from your soul. You think that maybe your idea was right, and that all they needed in order to open up was, well... some good food, some bad laughs, and some nice friends.

Before you know it, you feel the familiar burden of responsibility dragging on your shoulders. Toriel is there to care for them, yes, but a mother can only do so much, and there is already an unspoken understanding between yourself and this young human. One that goes deeper than any amount of warm butterscotch pie or goodnight kisses, and more often than not it is you who they run to for comfort. Be it in the ungodly hours of the night when shadows from the deepest parts of their mind come clawing to the surface, or in the light of day when the glint of a kitchen knife becomes a little too hard to manage on their own.

You look at them, and in a way you see fractions of yourself staring back. You find this to be unbelievably distressing, because how could anything so good benefit from anything that you've ever done? Or could ever hope to do? Because haven't you always been a fuckup, a lazy bag of bones, with nothing to offer but a long string of failures and regret.

But you still wipe spilt tears from puffy red cheeks and apply bandages to wobbly scraped knees, and from the depths of your memories it dredges up visions of tiny skeletal hands gripping at a bright red scarf, timid and innocent.

You feel like a child, who's been raising children.  
\---------------------

You think that maybe at one point, if you tried hard enough, you could have hated them. In another life, for crimes that they did not commit yet did at the same time. Hated them for all that they were and all that they could have been. For the red on their hands and the insufferably twisted smile that spread across their face, merciless and wanting.

But, oh, they've already built a home so deeply in your heart, housed in a cage of bleached white bone and gentle tugs on the sleeve of your coat. With innocent unassuming gap-toothed smiles and silent secrets shared with no one on earth but you.

You don't stand a chance.

And maybe, 

you think,

you never did.


End file.
